Logistics and the number game

My chemotherapy looks basically like and IV except that one of them is in a clear bag and looks like water and the other one is in a syringe that is pushed through my IV and is red.  Medical terms: cytarabene and idarubison.

I am grateful for many things through this experience, one of which is anti-nausea medication.  Mine has worked perfectly and the only nausea I have experienced is when one of them was missed.  As soon as the medication was given, my stomach returned to "normal".  Normal being not really hungry but still able to eat.

So, each night for 3 nights the red (idarubison) was pushed through the IV and for 7 nights a new bag of cytarabene was hung that would last 24 hours.  I am also grateful to excellent nurses and aides who monitor me so closely.  My blood pressure has been taken so many times that I feel like my arm should be bruised.  We aren't talking just a couple of times per day....it was every few hours.  But I would rather have them know exactly what my body is doing than not so I didn't really mind the 12:30 and 3:30am wake up calls.

Once chemo started the numbers game began...every morning we would get a report of my new numbers (total white blood cells, infection fighting white blood cells, evil cancerous white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets).  All of these numbers would decrease - the point of chemo is to kill all the bad white blood cells aka blasts.  Unfortunately there is some collateral damage to the other cells.  There is a threshold for the platelets and the red blood cells (hematicrid) and when you cross that threshold you get transfusions.  It is not a matter of if you will get transfusions it is a matter of when and of how many.

Luckily my numbers began to drop right away and continued to do so until 14 days after the beginning of chemo I have no white blood cells - YEAH!!!!  This is absolutely the outcome we have been praying for and are so excited.  The down side is that I have no immune system.  Actually I do have an immune system; it is the anti-biotics, anti-viral, and anti-fungal that are constantly being pumped into me!  

Logistics....
When all this started happening my parents, who live about 10 minutes away had left to go on a LDS mission to Columbus Ohio.  As usual, they took a long road trip on their way to Ohio.  Before they even got to Ohio we got the news that I did have leukemia.  Mom and Dad turned around and came home after arranging for a delay in their mission.  I am so grateful to them.  Because they live so close it is easy for them to run Callie and Elizabeth around to wherever they need to be and to help do things that I didn't quite get done like grocery shopping and back to school shopping.  Logistics were no longer a problem.